The recruitment landscape has been turned on its head. With remote working, skills shortages, and escalating expectations around reward taking over, many employers find themselves in a candidate-led market again.
Hiring practices utilised in the pre-pandemic world are now seen as outdated, ineffective, and time-consuming. Could it be time to adapt your recruiting practices and consider outsourcing your recruitment?
In this blog, we look at the following questions:
- What are the top 5 recruitment challenges for growing companies?
- What is an outsourcing recruitment service?
- What are the benefits of on-demand recruiting?
- How do I find a suitable partner?
What are the top 5 recruitment challenges for growing companies?
Recruiting the right talent at the right time is one of the most significant concerns and time-consuming processes for growing companies. At times, particularly during an already intense period, the challenges of recruitment can be overwhelming. Here we distil some of the experiences companies are seeing now:
- Top talent is scarce, and the market is moving quickly. Where recruitment is manager-led, carving out time to prepare the right job description, source a recruitment agency or job board and prepare an advert, review all applicants, interview a shortlist, prepare and issue a contract and onboard the successful candidate all eats into time available for other critical activity. Take too long though, and you risk losing the race for the best talent.
- Not only is talent scarce, but there is a considerable increase in companies competing for talent. Smaller growing companies cannot always compete on salary with the corporates and may need to create a different, but equally compelling narrative around their offering, while working harder to get that narrative across in a market where their reputation is not yet built.
- A promising candidate can be lost because of a poor candidate experience, at any stage of the recruitment journey. A good recruitment partner will keep in regular contact with candidates right through until they start, quickly address queries or changes, provide useful feedback and constructively facilitate offer negotiations. This will maximise your chance to recruit the right candidate while also leaving those who aren’t successful with a positive impression of your company – to be remembered and shared, helping to build your reputation.
- Hiring top talent is the first step, but first impressions of what it’s going to be like to work for you begin with the onboarding experience. This is the point at which recruitment agencies hand over to their client. So getting help throughout this stage can continue the professional, supportive and relationship-building journey for your new team member.
- Many of the tools used by recruiters are not cost-effective for small companies with modest recruitment needs, but many potential, but passive candidates will not be reached through direct advertising alone. In a crowded jobs market, not aligning a proactive, search-based approach with open advertising is a risk.
What is an outsourcing recruitment service?
An outsourcing recruitment service is a highly tailored service and can take many forms:
Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) involves handing off the recruitment of all or some roles to one or more external providers, who will scale up their allocated resources to match changes in need.
Embedded talent acquisition is broadly similar to an RPO, but more likely to involve dedicated resources operating fully within your company, as if they were an employee or department of your company, to manage end-to-end recruitment. Likely to be used and charged on an FTE basis.
On-demand recruitment provides extra talent acquisition support as and when needed. Whether recruiting a single role or undertaking a rapid scale-up of talent on-demand recruitment provides access to ad-hoc, specialist recruiter time to supplement existing recruitment capability or provide low-cost, dedicated support without agency commission fees. Charged according to time actually spent on your resourcing. A good recruitment partner can help you identify the roles required for growth and ensure the timely recruitment of the right talent to meet the business plan. Learn more.
A recruitment partner can help you identify the roles required for growth and ensure the timely recruitment of the right talent to meet the business plan.
What are the benefits of on-demand recruiting?
- The service is cost-effective, with companies paying only for the recruiter’s time: no agency costs, placement fees or hidden charges. Cost is not influenced by the successful candidate’s final package.
- Not only do companies benefit from reduced hiring costs, but also reduced time-to-hire as the recruiter focuses on your role.
- As it’s often difficult for companies to predict their talent needs, the service is ‘on-demand’, so it can be turned up and turned down as required.
- On-demand recruiters can adopt your brand identity and immerse themselves in your company’s culture and ways of working.
- The service is entirely flexible, so you can choose what your service looks like.
Case Study | Recruitment outsourcing halves scale-up’s time to hire talent
How do I find a suitable partner?
The good news is that recruitment is transforming, and the potential for growing companies to afford recruitment help and reduce the cost of hiring is a real possibility.
Outsourcing recruitment is the new way of recruiting for growing companies. If you think we can help, please schedule an initial chat through this link.
(Image source: Shutterstock)
